Thursday, 26 March 2015

At a time when Article 9 of the Japanese constitution is being re-examined, Kita Ikki (北一輝) provides a political philosophy of military domination that is as blunt and direct as Thomas Hobbes or Machiavelli --and yet (unlike Hobbes or Machiavelli) his objectives were to create and maintain a "citizen state" of "social democracy". (Wilson, 1966, p. 91)Kita's combination of militarism, socialism, and democracy (with an expansive view of Japan's leadership for the rest of Asia) is, perhaps, more salient to 21st century Japanese politics than anyone would like to admit.

Sunday, 8 March 2015

In a career pinioned (verb) by the audience's apprehension that anything (and everything) the artist says is likely to be an act of self-parody, Lil B's support for veganism is a grey area within a grey area. When he says he's gay, you know he's not really gay --and, let's not forget, CNN covered this as news. When he finally comes out and says he's vegan, presumably he'll find some way to switch it up and score a newspaper headline. Hey, even if he never follows through with it, Lil B > Nelly's vegan credentials.